Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, I misread that. I can see how that would be fun. I'm certainly not trying to discourage these kinds of exploratory exercises, and I agree that the reward is often in the journey.dr_loop wrote: ↑Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:49 pm... no, sorry I was'nt clear enough, with 'all the same notes' I mean the *fingering* not the actual musical notes."you like to play all the same notes in different tunings just to see how it feels", because all the same notes are going to sound exactly the same regardless.
So with the same muscle memory pattern you can explore many different musical patterns.
Especially when with the press of a button you can have every tuning you want.
And nobody prevents you from changing the tuning every second if you like
However, making such arbitrary choices doesn't really instill any new musical knowledge, nor does it do anything to improve your chops. That is to say, regardless of whatever mode you've unwittingly created by playing the same pattern over a different tuning scheme, it's of little use to you if you don't understand it; and sooner or later you will have to step outside of it, at which point you're going to need to know where you're going and why. To that end, the "perfect layout" is one that you thoroughly understand and have become proficient at. Otherwise, at least as far as the music is concerned, you're just making lateral moves.
To be clear, I say this in praise of Roger's design concept. On traditional instruments, the arrangement of the notes and the techniques required to navigate them proficiently is informed by the physical demands and limitations imposed by the instrument's design, which in turn is predetermined by the nature of the instrument and the materials required to actually build it and make it work: i.e. a cello has to look like a cello, a saxophone has to look like a saxophone, etc., and they must be played accordingly. The LinnStrument, on the other hand, is not at the mercy of acoustic properties, so Roger was able to build the ideal musical interface. The result is a linear, uniform, virtually frictionless playing surface, for which almost any tuning scheme will suffice. So it comes down to personal taste, rather than necessity. Hence my advice to shit-or-get-off-the-pot when it comes to picking the "perfect layout".
The "guitar" tuning, for example, is "perfect" for me because I already know where all the notes are. Granted, one could argue that it's unnecessarily complicated in comparison to the more isomorphic layout of using all fourths; but again, that becomes a moot point once you surpass a certain level of proficiency, because the playing surface presents equal challenges no matter which layout you choose. At the end of the day, when the proverbial rubber meets the road, it's your knowledge and your ability to perform on the instrument that will make or break the music. I don't care if your only reason for choosing a particular layout is that you like the pattern the lights make, my advice remains the same: pick one, learn it inside-out, and it will serve you well (wink).
Cheers!
P.S. Great conversation by the way, very interesting...